Theories of Justice, Profane and Prophetic:

Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution

by

Eric Jacobson

Gershom Scholem, The Bolshevik Revolution [1918]

(Translated from the German by Eric Jacobson)
Bolshevism has a central idea which lends magic to its movement: the
messianic kingdom can only unfold in the dictatorship of poverty. (Perhaps the error is that it cannot unfold in itself which is Tolstoyism.
This serious confusion brought so many of Tolstoys followers to the
movement). Because of this, only the judgement of the impoverished
has revolutionary power. The poor may not be just but they can never
be unjust. Poverty, even where it is dictatorial, is not Gewalt [authority/
violence]. Moscows theory of the firing squad appears as an ethical
outcome: the unjust kingdom stands trial. Bolshevism is the attempt to
stand divine judgement on its head. It kills in the name of a mission.
Revolution exists where the messianic kingdom is to be established
without the teachings. For this reason, there can be no revolution for
the Jews. The Jewish revolution has to be reconnected to the teachings.
A revolution that is clearly based on the messianic kingdom, like the
Bolshevik or French revolution, must be distinguished principally from
the frail pseudo-revolutions that are centered on progress, like Germany in 1848. The messianic kingdom, the eternal now of history,
cannot be reached gradually. Liberalism is a conforming imitation of
messianism that functions by a rule of operation. In key moments, it
is extended indefinitely and thus loses its conformity. Asymptotes are
the guidelines of liberalism. The circle turns from hyperbole to the
imaginary.
Revolutions fail. But this is not, nor can it ever be, an argument
against them. Revolutions convey time and again the silent teachings
of the unambiguity of history.
*

This essay is dedicated to David Hitchin.

[Gershom Scholem: In memoriam, 2 (Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 21), 2007]

Eric Jacobson

[2

Intrinsically, the Bolshevik revolution, like every legitimate revolution, has a double point in which Gewalt emerges through the inner
collision of structures (which must appear due to the exclusion of the
Torah).
The great historical paradox put forward is that exactly where poverty
reigns, it remains poverty nonetheless as if the faithfulness of the
poor to poverty would be the only and highest guarantee of the Bolshevik idea. Is this possible or sensible? Such a system would be
revolutionary consistency an absolute, self-sustaining system. And
precisely because revolutions, unlike liberalism, lack a form of
consistency understood in this sense, they fail.
Anatole France, in his book, La rvolte des anges, sets a limit for
the idea of the teachings with ironic necessity. His true, deep, and
perhaps unutterable question is: how can one overcome the prescriptive
circular reasoning of revolution? He does not answer the question. But
true mysticism can, which considers circular reasoning a legitimate,
fundamental idea.
Even though the Bolshevik revolution will be caught up in bloodshed
(and the miraculous thing about it is the very fact that it will not drown
in its own blood), it will nevertheless serve as the only high-point of
the history of the world war and, however saddening this may be, the
messianic reaction against it. Zionism has nothing in common with
the world war, from which it turns away without response. Whoever
affirms the history has to be a Bolshevist, seeing in it the futuristic
and purest form of the present in blood and misdeed.
One might be able to designate revolutionary actions as those distinguishable from both the ordinary and historical in that they are
conducted in good faith while standing in the face of history. The person
who knows that he is acting historically, is revolutionary. Yet Bolshevism does more than this: it acts not only conscious of standing in the
face of history, it seeks at the same time to act futurist in a specific
sense. But with action, this is not simultaneously possible. Bolshevism
tries perhaps with grandeur but surely for naught to suspend judgement over itself through the permanence of its singular point of Gewalt
which appears to itself as the future it anticipates. For this reason,
it is unjust, and the root of its reprehensibility is independent of its
position on spirituality and labor. 1
1

Gershom Scholem, Tagebcher, nebst Aufstzen und Entwrfen bis 1923, Band I,
19131917, ed. Karlfried Grnder and Friedrich Niewhner. Frankfurt: Jdischer Verlag,

[60*]